Fiona Of The Glen

PRELUDE It has long been a legend in our family that the females wrote about events leading to their marriage. Gunn family folklore claimed that the records stretched back for centuries, transcribed in leather-bound volumes securely locked in a brass-bound trunk. Nobody knows who started the tradition, but the eldest Gunn daughter was the guardian of the records wherever she happened to be. In Scotland, of course, it has always been legal for married women to retain their maiden names if they so wished. That fact makes it easier to trace our family line from generation to generation. When the Second World War erupted in 1939, the army requisitioned the house where the trunk resided, and the records disappeared. The legend continued, but with the disappearance of centuries of history, the tradition withered and died. For a couple of generations, the practice was remembered rather than followed. Then, in early 2017, government cutbacks shrunk the army. The government put the old Gunn property on the market. The contents were put to public auction in a saleroom in Edinburgh’s George Street, and as fate would have it, a distant cousin of ours bought the trunk. As soon as she realised what was inside, our cousin contacted the family. I was present as we gathered in Edinburgh and sifted through the contents. We found over twenty volumes, stretching back for hundreds of years. Some authors had used beautiful copperplate writing, others only contrived a nearly illegible scrawl, with stains that could come from tears, wine, or even blood. At least one writer had used mediaeval Gaelic, and others we have not yet opened. After a long family conference that included every female member of our branch of the Gunn’s, and many interested males, we decided to consider these journals historical documents. Some of us wondered if we should send the volumes to a museum or a library. After a heated debate, we decided not to, as we believed the curators would consign the memoirs to some archives where nobody would read them. Instead, we thought that we would transcribe these stories for the interest of the general public and any Gunn family historian. Once we arrived at that decision, there was the question of finding an understanding publisher that would consider such a diverse range of material. If we were lucky, the publisher might think the memoirs possessed sufficient literary merit to bring into the public domain. Fortunately, I discovered a publisher who bravely agreed to take a chance with this eclectic collection, if only one at a time. I took on the task of transcribing the volumes, which, in some cases, needed very little amendment and in others required a considerable re-write to ensure they were more suitable for modern tastes. I hope that this first volume interests and entertains the readers as much as it does me. Catriona Gunn